Walter Tull

Walter Tull is best remembered as one of the first Black British officers of the First World War. 

Born in 1888 in Folkestone, his father was a carpenter from Barbados whose own father had been enslaved, and his mother was a local Englishwoman. 

He experienced many hardships in his early life, losing his mother to breast cancer when he was 7 and his father to heart disease three years later.

With his brother Edward he was placed in an orphanage in Bethnal Green, where it is said he developed a thick skin that would serve him well in later life.

In 1900, he and his brother Edward toured as part of the orphanage’s choir, taking them to St Johns Methodist Church in Glasgow, where Edward was spotted by a couple who would go on to adopt him. Edward became the first Black dentist to hold the licentiate in dental surgery. 

With the absence of his brother, our key figure found solace in the orphanage’s football team and demonstrated real talent. 

He began playing for Tottenham Hotspur in 1909 at the age of 21, but racial abuse from football fans and players alike convinced the team’s management to relegate him to the reserve team. Finally, he found a star place in Northampton’s first team in 1911.

When war broke out in 1914, he was the first of his team to enlist and joined the Football Battalion. He was soon promoted to Lance Sergeant and in 1915 was deployed to France, fighting in key battles such as the Battle of the Somme.

In 1917, despite restrictions against Black people in the British army, he became the first Black commissioned officer and was nominated for a Military Cross, but he never received it, as on the 8th March 1918, he was killed in action leading a counter attack in Northern France.   Despite the efforts of a soldier under his command, his body was never recovered. 

In recent years, campaigners have been urging the British government and military to grant him a posthumous Military Cross and give him and other Black heroes of WWI the recognition they deserve.